New Zealand 'Living Icon' - fiction writer Patricia Grace - to appear at UH Manoa Distinguished Visiting Scholar program

February events will include readings and panel discussion

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Cristina Bacchilega, (808) 956-7619
UH Manoa Department of English
Posted: Jan 31, 2006

Patricia Grace, honored in 2005 as a living icon of New Zealand art at the second biennial Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon Awards, will be at UH Manoa next month for an evening program of readings and an afternoon panel discussion about her writings.

Grace is widely recognized as a key figure in contemporary world literature and in Maori, New Zealand, and Pacific literature in English. Her appearances here are under the auspices of the Manoa Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Liberal Arts program established by the UH Manoa Department of English.

Grace is of Ngati Toa, Ngati Raukawa and Te Ati Awa descent. She published the first collection of short stories by a Maori woman writer in 1975, and since then has written six award-winning novels: Mutuwhenua (1978), Potiki (1986), Cousins (1992), Baby No-Eyes (1999), Dogside Story (2001), and Tu (2004). Grace‘s fiction has been translated into several languages, and a number of her works have received prestigious book awards — including the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2005 for her most recent novel, Tu. She has published five more short-story collections and several children‘s books both in English and Maori, and is working on a new collection of short stories that will be out later this year.

Patricia Grace has scheduled two public appearances:

Wednesday, February 8, 7:00 p.m. — An evening reading at the UH Manoa Art Auditorium


Thursday, February 9, 3:00-4:30 p.m. — Panel discussion: "Indigenizing the Novel in Aotearoa: The Role of Culture and Identity — UH Manoa Kuykendall Auditorium

Both events are free and open to the public.

These events are made possible by the UHM Distinguished Visiting Scholar Program in the Liberal Arts. The English Department also thanks the College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature; School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies; Center for Pacific Islands Studies; Hawaiian and Indo-Pacific Languages & Literatures; Center for Hawaiian Studies; Political Science Department and its Indigenous Politics Program; Art Department; Mānoa journal; Center for Biographical Research; International Cultural Studies Certificate Program; Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas; and University of Hawaiʻi Press for their co-sponsorship and support.